‚There’s no chance he’ll get a fair trial in the U. S.‘
LONDON — After seven years holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is showing symptoms of “psychological torture” as he serves a British prison sentence and battles extradition to the United States, according to a United Nations official.
Extraditing Assange to the U. S., following the announcement last week of 17 new charges under the Espionage Act, would represent a grave threat to his human rights, including a scenario in which the anti-secrecy activist could receive “a life sentence without parole, or possibly even the death penalty, if further charges were to be added in the future,” said Nils Melzer the U. N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” read a statement released Friday by Melzer.
On Thursday, Assange, 47, missed a scheduled court appearance via videolink because he was “not very well,” according to his lawyer, and had been transferred from his cell to the health ward of Belmarsh Prison. WikiLeaks claimed Assange had “dramatically lost weight” and quoted a defense lawyer saying “it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him.”
“In the atmosphere and the conditions, he has gone from one prison to another prison,” WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said.
Assange regularly complained about how Ecuador treated him while he took refuge in a corner room of its red brick embassy. He unsuccessfully sued the Foreign Ministry last year over demands that he pay for his medical bills and clean up after his cat – among other conditions that he said were intended to force him from the embassy. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also dismissed his complaints.
Melzer said in an interview with The Washington Post that he at first declined to weigh in on conditions at the embassy when contacted by Assange’s lawyers in December. The special rapporteur said he can only pursue a couple of the 10 to 15 requests he receives each day. Additionally, Melzer admitted he was no fan of WikiLeaks and considered its founder a bad actor.
